R.L. Burnside,
(born Nov. 21/23, 1926, Harmontown, Miss.—died Sept. 1, 2005, Memphis, Tenn.), American blues musician who , became widely known in the 1990s for his spare, raw style of Mississippi Delta blues. Burnside spent most of his life working as a farmer and fisherman and playing the blues in local bars in Mississippi. After folklorists George Mitchell and David Evans recorded him in the late 1960s and ’70s, he played in occasional blues festivals in Canada and Europe as well as locally. In 1991 he appeared in Robert Mugge’s documentary film Deep Blues, and in 1992 he released his first album on Fat Possum Records, Bad Luck City. Over the next 12 years, Burnside released a number of well-received albums, including a collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey, and an album featuring techno redubbing, Come On In, which included the widely popular single “It’s Bad You Know.”

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.